


there are no forevers

by Lyona



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), F/M, Female Tony Stark, Fix-It of Sorts, MCU + 3490, Miscarriage, Post CACW, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Unplanned Pregnancy, mega angst, my mom is like my chosen deity ok, not anti-steve but more pro-tony cuz if ur not more on tony's side you don't love your mom enough
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 11:43:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12012000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyona/pseuds/Lyona
Summary: She was broken in some irrevocable way, somewhere deep and essential.- - - - -A world where the love between Natasha Stark and Steve Rogers doesn't solve everything.





	there are no forevers

 

It takes a while before Steve really confronts her. They did the talk; the emotional, painfully careful, apologetic talk that was required to duct-tape the broken pieces that their team had become. It wasn’t stilted, remarkably, and Tasha commends herself for not killing him, mostly because Rhodey refused to leave, probably knowing an audience was needed in order to keep the new fragile peace. It was lengthy and heart-felt, but it was as Captain America and Iron Woman. Not Tasha and Steve. So at the end when Tasha forced a smile that hurt her cheeks and said, “Welcome back, Cap,” it felt like a lie. Just another required falsity she’d grown accustomed to making since her highly publicized childhood. Steve probably felt it, too. She’s amazingly talented at putting up appearances, better than he ever could dream to be, but he knows her too well.

They never address what had happened between ‘Tasha and Steve’. It’s the chasm between them, one that Tasha refuses to breach. Steve tried to cross it with little, cautious things, like playing pool or watching a movie. Tasha made excuse after excuse, never looking him in the eye, always flitting around with her classic manic energy that’s not really there anymore in her tired, bruised bones.

She can’t avoid him, though, not as much as she wants to. Breathing the same _air_ as him hurts, in some pathetic way. But she has the team to think of, and she refuses to let anyone see the unfixable tension between them, not when they had just been so precariously put back together. Tasha always makes sure that whenever she and Steve are in the same room, there’s an audience, like the first time, with Rhodey and Natasha acting as pseudo-guards of Tasha’s sanity. Despite that Natasha turned traitor in the end, she’s too intelligent, she undoubtably sees the emptiness in Tasha’s eyes - her chest, her everything - and she’s not strong or proud enough to reject help anymore, however unwanted. The rest of the team re-forge their friendships out of the chaos, but they’re all smart. They all know what had been between them, Tasha’s aware of that, and while their friendships had taken some hits, Steve and Tasha had torn each other apart. Down to the marrow, piece by piece in all the ways that matter. So, Tasha puts on the full Stark charm, carefully throwing a teasing or snarky remark at Steve. The team laughs, and she feels successful. Steve laughs, too, but it sounds off to her ears. And he keeps… _looking_ at her. Like he’s playing the same game she is, for her sake. She hates that. She doesn’t want anything from Steve anymore.

Natasha doesn’t laugh. It shouldn’t be remarkably note-worthy, she hardly laughs. But Tasha knows why; she was the one who found her, who stayed with her in the hospital, even after Pepper showed up, before Tasha pushed her away with choice, scathing words and thinly veiled threats. But Natasha can read her like a book, she knows a lie when she hears one.

Steve’s always been a good judge of character - even if Tasha laughs at the thought until it fucking hurts, now - so it doesn’t surprise her that his _looks_ reach a breaking point. She’s starting to reach a breaking point, too. The smiles start hurting more, like they’ll tear her face open if she’s not careful, and the laughter leaves her nauseous. She starts drinking more, if that’s even possible. Steve knows her so well - she hates it - so he notices, and he finally can’t take it anymore.

It’s four in the morning, and Tasha’s given up on sleep and is pouring herself coffee in the kitchen. She hears his unmistakable footsteps, and resigns herself to her fate. They can’t go on like this - it’s been months of this bullshit ruse, and she’s _so tired._ She doesn’t care anymore how this goes; crying and kisses, which is unlikely, or a Siberia part two.

 _Oh heavens, but we just redid the kitchen,_ she thinks hysterically.

She doesn’t really care if this tears apart the fake peace between them, because she’s too tired to pull her verbal punches, and where that could leave them would be worse than ruined, she finds she may prefer that to this. Let him have the Avengers, she thinks, none of it matters, not like this.

This isn’t what she wanted when she set out to make a better world. It wasn’t what she intended when she signed the Accords. This isn’t worth it.

 

_It wasn’t worth it._

 

She steels herself, thoughts racing, she doesn’t want to hurt Steve, she’s done that enough, they’ve both hurt each other enough for a hundred lifetimes and she can’t bring herself to do it, even if she wants to. She just wants it to be over. She fixes her gaze on the steam rising from her mug as she struggles to compose the fastest, most articulate and believable way to end the conversation that’s about to happen.

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Steve says quietly from behind her. Tasha still jumps at his voice, and a little at his words. She expected a more cautious and vague approach to…whatever is between them, now. She knows what he means, and she hates that she’s that readable to him. That somehow he knew she was hiding something. She wishes she was able to know when he was hiding something. She never thought he was capable of it and, well, look where that got them.

“Steve…” she murmurs, as she drags a hand down her face, not even able to distance him with ‘Rogers’. Steve’s there all of a sudden, close beside her. She can’t tear her gaze away from the counter. She’s run through what she would say to him - how she would tell him - in her head about eight thousand times, said it in the mirror, screamed it hurling glasses and everything else that was breakable at walls until Rhodey or Pepper stopped her, held her and validated her and told her everything would be alright. They were lying of course, but it always calms her down when they tell her that lie, the same one they’ve said for years that sometimes comes true.

But it can’t get better now - not after this, whatever exists between Steve and Tasha now would never get better. Tasha’s self-respect - or self-righteousness, as some or most would say - doesn’t exist anymore. She can’t play this off. She can’t pretend like she’s above vulnerability - above hurt - like she does with everything else that’s painful. This isn’t like anything else. Every other fuck-you the universe has thrown at her was expected, most of it, anyway. She’d given up on happy endings at twenty-one, but occasionally managed to get hurt anyway. She never thought it could get worse than Obi. But then Steve, what Steve did to her…he ruined her, he made her think _this is it, this will be forever,_ defying the deepest coding necessarily embedded in her soul. But of course, it wasn’t, and somehow….she was still surprised. She hates herself for that. There are no forevers, and she forgot that. 

Every part of what happened was more painful than anything else had ever been; the - _it_ \- and _her mom_. Tasha has no mental model to begin processing the fact that more than just her blood had seeped onto the concrete in Siberia - about what that means. But her mom, who loved her so much that every self-destructive thing Tasha ever did felt like a betrayal, an often ignored one, but a betrayal none the less. Sometimes she feels guilty that she doesn’t feel the same about her dad - but her mom was different; her love was so unconditional, so absolute and shown in every word she ever said to Tasha, she was a beautiful constant, and she was _hers._

Her mom was already in the forefront of her mind every day, before. The additional information just made it worse. The fact that _Steve -_

“Tasha,” Steve says, sounding a hair away from begging. “Talk to me. Please. I thought…I thought this was getting better. Or - that it could get better. I know we both said things - did things, and I-I messed up, in a big - in an unforgivable way. I never should’ve…” he trails off, probably noticing the sudden shake that ran through Tasha’s frame. “But I thought it would get better, is all.”

Tasha turns from the counter, leaning back against it, still keeping a firm hold on the edge. Keeping herself grounded, she finally meets his eyes after weeks of avoiding doing so - afraid of what she’d see. Or what he’d see, what truth he’d figure out.

“Some things can’t be fixed by talking, Steve,” she murmurs, not capable of forcing any ire, snark or any other tone that she uses as a barrier. She’s too wrung out, now. And it’s not what she wants to say, not really. She wants to hurt him - wants to take his heart and rip it out so he understands. Wants him to feel something inside him die - literally and metaphorically. She can forgive him - she has - for leaving her bleeding and broken in some irrevocable way in some place in bumfuck Siberia, but -

 

_Mom._

 

_Baby._

 

Before everything that happened, before the Accords and Barnes, before the horrible truth that warped them forever, she was going to name the baby James, if it was a boy. For Bucky and Rhodey. Maria for a girl. She thought it was a boy, though - she knew it was a boy. Which was stupid, and she told herself so when it hurt too much. It was still only a bundle of cells, when it -

Most days when she thinks about it for too long she throws up, then drinks so much she throws up again.

“We can try,” Steve murmurs, his eyes gentle and beseeching and too blue - _too much._

Tasha tears her eyes away, focusing intently on the newly-fixed tile floor.

“N-"

“Rhodes - ” Steve interrupts, and Tasha shakes her head, exhaling sharply,

“It’s not about Rhod - "

“No, Rhodes said -” Tasha goes cold, freezing in place. Steve notices, and continues more gently, “Rhodes said there was something else, not just…” He huffs out a sad sort of laugh. “He wanted to kill me - said he’d kill me for what I did. I said I’d talked to you about it, that I was sorry. He said I didn’t understand.” Steve tilts her chin up from the floor and Tasha forces herself not to think of the last time they were this close - both trying to draw as much blood as possible. Steve drew more, in the end. More than just hers, more than he’d thought. For Barnes.

_Never enough. Not for anyone._

It’s that thought that awakens something fierce and old in Tasha, some part of her lying dormant for the years of happiness she’d stupidly - _inexcusably -_ allowed herself to get comfortable in. She jerks away from Steve, coming alive and feeling wrecked and empty but _alive again._

“Fuck off, Rogers,” she spits, shoving him away. He doesn’t budge, but steps back, giving her space. “Nothing matters, I’m over it - I fucked up, you fucked up. It’s done, let’s move on with our lives, alright?” Steve looks so miserable and contrite that that new part of Tasha - the one who felt really happy, safe and whole for the first time since _Mom -_ hurts.

Steve looks pained, and so hopeful.

“Can we? Move on? Really move on?” Tasha shakes with rage, and she feels twenty-one again, lost and alone and _so angry._ She grabs the nearest object - a coffee mug - and hurls it at him. He dodges, of course, and Tasha reaches blindly and throws until the only sounds are glass shattering and her screams. She doesn’t know when she started, but she can’t stop.

“You really think we can move on? Seriously?” She laughs, it sounds ugly and choked even to her own ears. “You picked Barnes!” She hurls a plate at his head, it grazes and he continues to dodge, but he doesn’t fight back. “He killed my parents - my _mom_ and _dad,_ Steve!” Her eyes sting, her face is wet and she’s ashamed.

“She was -" she sobs, and Steve has this look on his face like his heart is breaking. Just like in Siberia. _Good,_ she thinks. She doesn’t mean it. “You took _everything!_ You left me in some fucking ice cube hell hole - you _killed him_ _, Steve!”_ Steve freezes, and a glass hits him in the head, showering him with glass but doing no real harm. She hates that she feels guilty, so she reaches for something else - but she can’t find anything, it’s all gone, everything’s gone -  _Baby, Mom, Dad, Baby, Mom, Dad -_

Steve is right there again, and she’s on the floor somehow, sobbing and shaking, arms locked around her knees with her face pressed to them.

 _“Tasha,”_ he rasps, forcing her arms away from her face. His eyes are wide, and he’s gone deathly pale. Tasha can’t make herself feel glad. She still loves this man. She’s been trying to drink and cry and scream her way into hating him, but _God_ she loves him.

“What did I do?” He whispers, sounding wrecked, sounding utterly destroyed. Tasha breaks, she has no fight left, so she just sobs brokenly on the floor. Steve’s large hands are clutching her shoulders, almost too hard, too shaken to be aware of it.

“He died,” she says, nonsensically. “My family’s dead, all of them; Mom, Dad, and t-the baby. They’re all gone, and I’m -"  _alone._ She hears a horrible sound, and looks up as Steve bites the inside of his cheek in an effort to choke it down. He’s shaking, he looks like he’s going to be sick, and he looks the most tormented she’s ever seen him. Even more so than in Siberia, when they were dancing on the edge of killing each other, no punches pulled, and Steve had this look in his eyes like he was dying with every hit he threw her way. With the cry that sounded more like a sob that had wrenched out of his throat the moment he brought his shield down on her arc reactor. He’d hurt her worse than she’d ever been hurt, but she had loved him - _she loves him -_ too much. She can’t lose him, too. Anything else, she can take. Every hurt, every person she’s loved and lost, she’s been able to take it. She can lose everything - she’s good at that. But not him. _God,_ not him.

“I really want to hate you,” she chokes out. She wants to tell him everything she feels, but she can’t force the words out of her throat. So she forces herself to look at him, instead, praying he can see what she can't say. He’s crying, and it hurts her. “I want to hate you, and I _can’t_.”

Steve falls from his knees onto the floor, shuffling until he sits beside her. After a long moment, she leans into him. After everything, she still misses him, and he’s right here beside her, and the warmth of his side pressed to hers somehow makes everything a bit closer to okay. Steve tentatively wraps an arm around her shoulders, squeezing tight after a moment, like he misses her, too, and it gets even closer, somehow. The man is like magic, Tasha thinks dazedly.

“I’ve been hurt a lot,” Tasha says, and her voice sounds very far away. “I’ve lost a lot. Everyone leaves, eventually. That’s what I’ve always known - thought. But you…” she tilts her head to look at him, and Steve looks back down, still pale, with wet cheeks, mouth agape but not speaking. There really isn’t much to say. “You were the only one who didn’t mean to. The only one who came back. That means something, I guess.”

They look at each other for a long time, wrapped in silence. Steve takes a sharp breath, trying to speak, and after multiple attempts succeeds, even if it comes out choppy and wet.

“I’m so - I don’t know how, Tasha - I don’t know how to -" Tasha smiles, and it’s real, the first real one in a long time - even if it’s small and weak, and her eyes sting, and her palms have some glass in them.

“It’s…it’s not okay. But,” she breaths in, stealing herself, “maybe it will be? I can’t - I don’t know if…I’m never going to forget this,” she finally says. Steve breathes, and it’s more like a shudder. She tries to articulate the truth she’s always known.

“I love you. I’ll love you forever,” she says, quietly, but sure. She’s never been more sure of anything. “I can take a lot - I have. But not…” she trails off, but Steve understands. He always understands. “So, let’s…try, I guess. It’ll take a lot, and I’m fucked up. But you know that. And we’re going to have to have a really long conversation about everything, when I’m not a wreck. But, for now, I just need you to know that.” Steve looks down at her, the look in his eyes a little foreign, she’s never seen him in this much pain, but she can see it, she’s seen it a thousand times, it seems; he understands her, and he loves her. “But, you know…We can try.”

Steve is shaking, and he looks like he can’t really formulate words, and Tasha somehow musters the strength to reach up and brush away some of the tear tracks on his cheekbones. He takes her hand quickly, squeezing and pressing a kiss to it.

“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> if it makes anyone feel better in my head they do end up having 3 kids (in my head and in mini fics i've written - Luke Collins - in MCU Maria's maiden name is Collins Carbonell, and Peter suggests Luke for nerd reasons and they dig it - James Howard, and Maria Sarah)


End file.
